Words in a Blender

Look at me, the words I wrote
And see how deep my soul goes
The terseness of my lines denote
I have no time for prose

Here a phrase and there a phrase
My disconnected pieces
Await your gaze and then your praise
I hope it never ceases

What? My words confuse
You poor illiterate fool
Never edit, say the muse
It is their golden rule

Pearls and swine shall never mix
There's my neophyte's cliché
And my relic word is betwixt
As partial rhymes give way

I hoist the verse for all to see
The masterpiece I tender
But critics cry my poetry
Are just words in a blender

America

America, where Capitalism is religion,
The Rich are it’s disciples
And the Poor it’s parishioners

America, where Education is big business,
Teachers are it’s wage slaves
And Students grist for the mill

America, where Heath Care is unattainable,
The Food Industry is it’s poison
And the Pharmaceuticals it’s addiction

America, where Politics is divisive,
The Republicans are the Democrats
And the Democrats are Republicans

America, where The Press is marketing,
The Reporters are it’s shills
And the Taglines it’s facts

America, where Fear is the governor,
Safety is the product
And Privacy it’s price

America, where War is profitable,
The Tax Payers are the investors
And the War Industry it’s stock holders

America, where Guns are freedom,
The NRA is a front
And Gun Owners it’s dupes

America, where the Dream is American,
The Lottery is the mechanism
And the Game is rigged

The Group

While wandering aimlessly in the cold dark lonely void
A voice calls out beckoning to join them
A warm, welcoming refuge promises to accept
And all within are quick to approve the new arrival

Plastic smiles greet the nascent recruit
Whose eyes are full of hope and happiness
Having found a bastion of belonging
Where superficiality is initially served to the unvetted

But since assimilation is the goal and rejection the risk
Suppositions slowly slink into the pleasantries
To try the tribal truth on the malleable member
Whose initial reactions are secretly judged

Adoration is the first victim of a furrowed brow
Dare the critical become the ostracized
And while the elder associate attempts to appease
The threat is averted by accepting the innocuous idea

But as the group devours, the dogma digs deeper
Layer by layer leaving little of the landscape left
Replacing the unique with the canonical
Until the individual is indistinguishable from the institution

Empty Nest

It was the best time we never had
And she was in costume
With only her round little face showing

As the wagon slowed, we got off
First untying the balloons that adorned its bed
And with that bundle of balloons in tow
She joined the children who scurried and scattered
And was quickly lost among the crowd

With confidence, she played
And with confidence, I busied myself
With the mechanics of the day
And after a moment, I put down my tools
And that day, that beautiful day was over

I looked for her as a wagon arrived
With new children, ready for their day
And when I finally caught up with her
I lied on the ground to watch her play
But something had changed

“What happened to the balloons”, I asked
And as I watched her look for them
I felt compelled to explain to the unseen crowd
That she was in college
And to their unspoken question, I answered
She is short for her age

I watched the happiness drain from her face
As she realized that the balloons where gone
She began to cry releasing a lone Mylar balloon
And as she fell into my arms, I reached up
Barely grasping the balloon’s edge
And noticed it was old and deflated

We fell to ground and were all alone
For the crowds had gone, as had our time
And I began to sing to her, a song she had loved
But the words choked in my throat
So, instead of singing, we cried
She for her loss
And me for mine

And then I awoke into the darkness
And the realization
That she was gone

The Banner of God

The sickening men who rule the land
The things they think they understand
They spread their death for all to see
Then pray and weep on bended knee

They kill those they don’t understand
And deliver their souls into His hand
But any god who’d accept the fee
Is no god fit for you or me

I wish there was a placed called Hell
Where He would burn and forever dwell
For all the things he’s said and done
With the Holy Ghost and his bastard Son

The Fotomat

Sanitized through the sands of time

My memories of the Fotomat

Are pristine and picture-perfect

The remnants of a seemingly simpler time

Poised parenthetically in parking lots

These bastions of drive-thru culture

Housed the hopes of hundreds

That their modest memories would be maintained

And like the photographs they dispensed

They have faded into the landscape

Worn down by weather and time

Withering wistfully into the past

In these days of plentiful photography

I sorely miss the time of these icons

Where the rarity of picture taking

Met with the now rarity of film

See What We Have Made For You

See the fear that we have made for you

It's been designed for your enjoyment

Partake of it slowly letting it seep into your bones

And once it's part of you, inseparable

Then and only then are you ready

To propagate it to others

See the god we have made for you

It's been designed for your enjoyment

Partake of it early letting it seep into your bones

And once it's part of you, indistinguishable

Then and only then are you ready

To proclaim it to the world

See the lie we have made for you

It's been designed for your enjoyment

Partake of it often letting it seep into your bones

And once it's part of you, irrefutable

Then and only then are you ready

To kill for it

An Alliterative Allusion of Affluence

Bobbles bought and brought back home

In big bright bags

Bring but a brief moment of bliss

And wanting wanes once one has won

The one thing of worth that one wanted

Winning a mere whiff of wealth

Then reality rears and ruins the rapture

Of recently retrieved rewards and revives the rational

For repeating the ritual regularly reserved for the rich

Such senseless spending sprees

Are sadly sparse substitutes

For some sense of societal significance and stature

The Naked Canvas

The naked canvas sits silently longing for the artist

Who has long been replaced by a charlatan

One whose canvas would be best left blank

Instead of stained with the paints of deceit

This alleged artist has partaken of the Kool-Aid

Subscribing that anything proclaimed as art is art

But if everything is art then nothing is

And if nothing is art then art is nothing

And in this world of nothing the con artist dips his brush

Feigning emotion with each stroke that mars the lonely canvas

Producing a work void of truth and of worth

Saying nothing by those who have nothing to say

And in a time where the void is filled by commerce

The purveyors of perjury pervert the process further

Giving it commercial value by titling it appropriately

A Polar Bear in a Snow Storm

Illusions

Youth and hope conspire to create a single scenario of success as inevitable and propel the naïve neophyte into action

Fueled by this knowledge, our pristine Pollyanna proclaims its intentions and expectations which fall upon a deaf and cruel world

Undaunted, the innocent doubles its efforts at the cost of all else fully confident that its certain success will squelch its detractors

But truth has the final word on the matter and proves that success is an elusive prize randomly reserved for the fortunate few

Experience and bitterness conspire to create a full future of failure as inevitable and cast the wounded into a quagmire of doubt

Hampered by this knowledge, our pessimistic protagonist’s feats of folly and fear elicit jeers from an unimpassioned and critical world

Undaunted, the desperate doubles its effort at the cost of dignity fully confident that its eventual success will squelch its detractors

But truth has the final word on the matter and proves that actions without purpose procure a hollow and flaccid victory

Wisdom and time conspire to create a rendering of random reality as inevitable and ground the weary on a foundation of understanding

Empowered by this knowledge, our helpless hero resigns from the unwinnable war unnoticed by a preoccupied and disinterested world

Undaunted, the astute redirects its effort at the cost of nothing fully confident that its actual success will confuse its detractors

And truth has the final word on the matter and proves that absolute success and purpose are merely illusions

Caw Caw Phony

The cacophony of cawing crows
raise the trivial to the level of important
wasting their limited intelligence of happenstance
as self-appointed sooth sayers of society
and poison the morning air with their vile vocalizations.

I dream of ridding the landscape of these vermin
whenever their screeching sounds disturbs my slumber
in what is nothing but a fantasy of a murder of crows
who learn their lesson thanks to the back end of my boot.

And as quickly as it starts, it ends
leaving the morning air stillborn and serene
except for the lingering echoes of their poisoning pandemonium
leaving me no choice but to listen for their inevitable return.

Look Here

Look back at the shadows of the lost forever.
The child since grown.
The loving parent lost.
The average moments, now precious and ever elusive.

Look forward at the illusions of the hopeful never.
The promises of then.
The solution of time.
The extraordinary moments, yet realized and ever elusive.

Look here at the images of the actual now.
Yesterday's promise.
Tomorrow's longing.
The ubiquitous moments, undervalued and ever elusive.

(reposted from my $100 Million Dollar Lottery Question Blog)

Passing Moon

Passing moon, I see your face
Not long ago, we left this place
Exit Earth, and enter space
Giant step, for human race

That was then, we've played our ace
Passion lost, our new disgrace
Replaced with goals, so commonplace
Passing moon, I miss your face

The Facade

A rickety wall of a special design
With fifty-two bricks from a quarry of mine
Is mortared with greed, a most powerful glue
A devilish deal, stacked up against you

I play my hand as three more walls rise
And proclaim it solid and accept my prize
But before I am through and without a complaint
Conceal what I’ve built with a layer of paint

And content with that, I’m not in the least
But consumed with the job of feeding the beast
And amazed I am with the ease of it all
I build even higher, it never will fall

Then on that day, when the winds barely blew
The face cards gave way from the cracks in the glue
And the laws of physics were suspended no more
The house of cards fell and evened the score

Instead of little, we wanted it all
And now we have nothing and still I recall
That day when we cooked up our little white lies
We swallowed them whole and sealed our demise

And what will we learn while we clean up the mess
Will it happen again, I'll venture a guess
Will we fail to reign in our acts of excess
There's only one answer, the answer is yes

Vicious Circle

Those miserably confined to a sea of mediocrity
Scour among their consuming bleakness
For a modicum of hope, the faintest sign
For a lone individual willing to rise above the rest

Blissfully buoyed by the hope of the masses
The chosen sole rises higher and higher
On the increasing winds of the collective proclamations
To a towering position over the rest

Perched on its precarious pedestal
The anointed one adorns a mask
Hoping to conceal all fear and doubt
As it basks in the flashes of the moment

Fueled by the worship of the populace
The anomaly rises to excess and estrangement
And begins to reject the illuminated lie
While hiding from the insatiable source of its own demise

But the weight of the legend takes its price
When eventually the adorned takes a common misstep
And by the gravity of mass contempt, the idol falls
And the capricious crowd devours its Host

And while in the bowels of those who bore it
The ostracized finds little solace in its infamy
While the devoted aggrieved and full of indignation
Tend to the wounds of the misled

But soon the scornful laments the scorned
And in return, the star faintly glimmers
Illuminating tempered hope for all
And re-elevating the depressed to a modest level

And now the devoted are myopic no more
Having seen their adoration in its true light
Abused, broken and grounded by the weight
Of its previous position at the pinnacle

And as quickly as all was forgiven, all is forgotten
And again the bleakness of normalcy raises its head
To quench its voracious appetite for another victim
And the whole vicious circle repeats itself evermore

Safe

Safe, sound and trapped just the same
A cage replete with its own sense of shame
Move quickly, the door it is open, ajar
Bask in the shadows to conceal the deep scar

Breathe ever deeply, a lung of fresh air
Exhale the toxin of doubt and of scare
Over your shoulder from where you once came
Freedom replete with its own sense of shame

Grope in the darkness for new chains that bind
Panicked and frenzied, your new daily grind
Snuff out your passion and smother your hope
Drink the elixir, a new way to cope

Find yet another new place to dwell
Give up once more, your new private hell
A cage replete with its own sense of shame
Safe, sound and trapped just the same

Blind Man's Doubt

Now we discard the old
How could we be so blind

And celebrate its loss
And strike it from our mind

Then we embrace the new
Invest in it our hope

And condemn ourselves to
The same piece of rope